Prince Charles was given some 100th birthday
cards for his grandmother on the second day
of his summer visit to Wales.
Pensioner John Eliss from Machynlleth handed
the cards to the Prince as he toured the mid
Wales town on Saturday.
Prince Charles promised the 73-year-old that
he would deliver them personally to the Queen
Mother in time for her centenary birthday on
August 4.
"The cards were from some friends and one I
had got myself," said Mr Eliss.
"I am very proud
because I know she will
definitely get them
now"
The Prince was in
Machynlleth on the
second day of his
Welsh tour.
He is staying at the
Vaynor Park country
house near Welshpool ,
amid speculation that
his companion Camilla
Parker Bowles is also with him.
Mrs Parker Bowles accompanied the Prince on
his recent stay in Scotland, but did not
participate in any of his formal engagements.
In June she was with
him at an official gala
dinner in London's East
End in aid of the
Prince's Foundation
Observers believe it is
possible she may
appear with the Prince at the opening of the
Royal Welsh Show on Monday.
Today Prince Charles visited a local day care
centre and met members of the Young Farmers
who have transformed the garden there as
part of a Prince's Trust project.
During a walkabout in the town, eight-year-old
Ryan Jones gave the Prince his £1.50 pocket
money to buy sweets for Princes William and
Harry.
"I gave him my pocket
money and asked him
to buy some sweets for
the two Princes. He
was very grateful," said
Ryan.
Later the Prince left by
helicoptor for
Caernarfon Castle
where he was to open
the Regimental Museum
of the Welch Fusiliers
before taking a walk in
Snowdonia.
On Friday the Prince opened the National
Botanical Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire
in the garden's centrepiece the Great
Glasshouse designed by Sir Norman Foster.
He continued his tour with a visit to the War
Memorial Hospital in Brecon where he spent
more than an hour chatting to patients.
And at his next stop, an organic farm at
Llandrindod Wells, the Prince offered
encouragement to abattoir owners to continue
pressurising the Government to meet the cost
of extra EU inspections.
~*~
People's Republic of Bromley denies the
Queen Mother her birthday card(Electronic Telegraph)
By Jenny Jarvie
A SUBURBAN London council has voted not to send Queen Elizabeth the
Queen Mother a 100th birthday card after protests by four Liberal Democrat
and two Labour councillors.
The six members of Bromley council, south-east London, insisted that the
Queen Mother was "no more than Mrs Windsor of Clarence House".
Bromley is traditionally a Conservative borough but the council shifted to joint
Liberal Democrat and Labour control after the 1997 local elections.
The proposal to send the Queen Mother a birthday card was made by David
Crowe, the Liberal Democrat mayor, but the Liberal Democrat and Labour
councillors shouted: "No, no don't do it." Mr Crowe then asked those
opposed to him sending the card to raise their hands, and - to cries of
"shame" from Tories - the mayor said that he was not sending the card
because there was not unanimous support.
Michael Tickner, the leader of Bromley's Conservative group and the mayor
of Bromley from 1995 to 1996, said: "The majority of us believed we should
send the Queen Mother a card but a small number of republicans and
anti-monarchists on the council hijacked the meeting.
"These petty-minded dissidents are completely out of touch with the feelings
of Bromley residents. The Queen Mother is very special. She has done a
tremendous amount for the country in 80 years of public life and has never
flinched from her duties.
"I believe the people of Bromley respect her achievements and would want us
to send her a card on their behalf. I will now be writing to the Queen Mother
on behalf of Conservative residents with our own message of congratulations."
Ernie Dyer, one of the Labour councillors who objected to the Queen Mother
receiving a card, said: "If we were to send cards to every Bromley woman
who turns 100, then I would have no problem. I just feel that the Queen
Mother has done nothing to deserve being singled out in this way.
"She is no more than Mrs Windsor of Clarence House, London. Her life has
been one of extreme privilege and she has never had to work in a kitchen or
nurse children. Tens of thousands of cards celebrating the Queen Mother's
birthday have been sent to Clarence House from Britain and around the
world."
A spokesman for Clarence House said: "We have no comment to make. This
is a matter for the particular borough. Everybody is free to make their own
mind up about whether they send a card. The cards are still coming in and we
haven't got enough people to count them. They are being sent by all sorts of
people - from schoolchildren to huge organisations."
~*~
The self-effacing nation(Electronic Telegraph)
By Dominic Lawson
IN Adam Nicolson's book on the Millennium Dome
there is a marvellous exchange between Michael
Heseltine, the sole Tory voice on the Millennium
Commission, and Mark Fisher, the man bought in by
the Blairites to create the show for the Dome's first
night. Mr Fisher was, you will not be surprised to hear,
a rock show organiser, whose fame rested, among
other things, on catapulting a group called U2 on to the
stage in a 15-metre-high rotating lemon.
On hearing Mr Fisher's plans for the opening night,
described by Nicolson as "an eco-poetic rock-carnival
fantasy", Mr Heseltine growled: "More people would
burst into tears if a band of the Royal Marines marched
across the arena than anyone ever would for your
show." "Yes," said Fisher, "but not for the reasons you
think."
Mr Fisher, as we now know, won the argument. But to
Michael Heseltine goes the glory of being proved right
by events. I say this, having just completed a peculiar
double. I was present at the opening night of the Dome
(courtesy of the Labour Government) and at the Queen
Mother's 100th Birthday Pageant (courtesy of the
Armed Forces). I did see people cry at the opening of
the Dome, but they were tears of exasperation and
frustration. At the Queen Mother's pageant the Army,
even in the wake of a series of bomb warnings
specifically designed to disrupt the event, managed to
organise everything, including the thousands of
spectators, to perfection. And there were tears of the
sort which Heseltine had longed for at the Dome's
opening: those of thrilled pride and unbridled
admiration.
I doubt that there were many dry eyes among the 1,000
Sunday Telegraph readers at Horse Guards Parade as
the last of the procession passed by. These were the
few surviving members of the Victoria Cross and
George Cross Association, and their slow but steady
progress in front of the Queen Mother was punctuated
by a fly-past by the Battle of Britain memorial flight.
In my case, I admit, the emotion was vicarious. I am a
child of the post-imperial age, having been born on the
day that fuel rationing was brought in during the Suez
crisis. On the other hand, the maps of the world still
showed vast areas of imperial pink in the classrooms of
my schooldays, and I was brought up to believe that
Britain was the greatest country in the world, but not in
the way that Mr Blair now brags about it, openly ("our
sense of humour, our creativity," etc, etc ). It was
unspoken, assumed, quietly understood. Yet I was very
far from being the youngest member of the audience
who was visibly moved by the event. There were many
teenagers clearly aglow with the experience, although
much of what they were seeing would now not even be
taught in their GCSE history module, being much too
"linear" and "anglocentric".
I am not, in fact, a sentimental royalist, and therefore
understand those who complain that the history of this
country is grossly distorted if it is viewed though the
prism of the lives and reigns of our crowned heads. The
point, however, is that as we saw the hundreds of
organisations associated with the Queen Mother
parade past us alphabetically, from the Aberdeen
Angus Cattle Society onwards - taking in the
Dachshund Club, the Hastings Winkle Club, the
London Children's Flower Society, the Poultry Club of
Great Britain, the Professional Classes Aid Council,
the Shetland Pony Stud Book Society - we were
witnessing the celebration not merely of the Queen
Mother's 100th birthday, but of our entire nation, in all
the diversity of its little battalions.
What we were celebrating was the Britain that does not
always appear in the newspapers; the Britain which is
not paid for by the Government, nor moans that it
should be; the Britain which runs, rules and regulates
itself; the Britain - alas, a shrinking one - which one
might describe as the self-effacing state. This is an
intensely complex and interlocking series of
relationships, far removed from the colossal and
clod-hopping "community" so much promoted by the
current Government.
The Queen Mother, however, is clearly the perfect
figurehead for the self-effacing state. Smiling
impenetrably, showing an identical, indiscriminate
pleasure at all who present themselves, she is the
elegant mirror in which a nation can choose to see
itself reflected. It is a most subtle piece of magic and
was, for a couple of hours last Wednesday, the
greatest show on earth.
~*~
Queen's staff lose knight's medal (Uk times)
Christopher Morgan
THE Queen was embarrassed by her staff last week after they mislaid
an honour due to be presented at court to Eduard Shevardnadze, the
president of Georgia and the former Soviet foreign minister.
She had to admit to Shevardnadze that her officials could not find the
elaborate insignia of an honorary knighthood of the Most
Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, which she was due
to bestow on him.
As Shevardnadze, 71, accompanied by his wife, approached the suite
where the Queen was to make him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order
on Wednesday, she called upon a page to bring her the special
presentation box. He could not locate it and a scramble ensued.
The Queen was forced to extend the audience, originally scheduled
for 20 minutes, to 35 minutes, as the search continued outside the
room. The embarrassed Queen and the puzzled Shevardnadzes made
small talk through an interpreter as the minutes ticked on.
Eventually, in a day packed with engagements, there was no
alternative but to apologise and tell the president, who had come to
the palace after meeting Tony Blair at Downing Street, that the award
would have to be sent to him.
After Shevardnadze, widely credited with having helped to end the
cold war alongside Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president,
had left, the box was discovered under the desk of an official in the
private secretary's office. It had been thought to be someone's
shopping. Later an equerry took the box to Claridges and, on behalf
of the Queen, presented it to Shevardnadze.
The Georgian embassy declined to comment, but an amused diplomat
referred callers to a tiny mention in Thursday's Court Circular which
revealed the royal red faces. After stating that the Shevardnadzes
had visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace, it added separately that
his excellency "later" received the insignia.
A palace insider admitted the embarrassment but said the incident
should be set alongside the "thousands of honours bestowed each
year in the palace and the colossal number of engagements which run
perfectly smoothly".